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President Obama’s Hateful Policies Against Sikhs — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

I greeted my young Sikh friend. Neither of us spoke of the tragedy. We just spoke of our mutual compassion and respect. He said his father wants him to leave this country … to a place with less bigotry, discrimination, and violence; I guess: South Africa.

During his reign, President Obama’s policies have consistently encouraged Hate Crimes against Sikhs. Below are examples. Most of the world’s Sikhs live in India. Sikhs do not cut their hair or beard. Many wear turbans. The massacre operation was carried out by a Right-wing Terrorist who was US Military Intelligence veteran who was specifically trained to carry out such Psy Ops attacks. He was indoctrinated into anti-religious Hate Groups in the Army.

But what can we expect out of a sleazy outfit like Reuters except propaganda? The New York Times [speaking of sleaze] revealed last month that both it and Reuters regularly Bribe President Obama by giving him editing privilege over wording of their articles. New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters divulged that both his paper and Reuters [and other so-called "free" press] began paying the Bribes after President Obama Blackmailed them, insisting that they would get no access to the President if they did not pay the Bribes. Isn’t it nice having a President from the Chicago Mafia? http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2012/07/21/ny-times-bribes-obama-and-romney-after-campaigns-demand-it/

2. Sikh Slavery in Obama’s puppet state Bahrain: President Obama, Commander and Chief of the US Armed Forces, could park the Navy’s 5th Fleet anywhere he wants. Anywhere he wants. That’s what “Commander and Chief” means. Let’s assume the reason that he parks it in Bahrain is not Only because he wants Sikhs to be kept as Slaves. Let’s assume that he has some other reason that doesn’t seem as evil. Even so, Slavery is a deal-breaker. We fought a Civil War in this country over Slavery. Here’s a Bahraini ad to buy a 22-year-old female Sikh as a sex slave, and have her delivered to Bahrain from Punjab in India. http://www.punjabimatrimony.com/matrimonials/Country/17/Bahrain.html Abraham Lincoln said “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” Under President Obama’s “democracy,” or morals, or whatever you want to call it, keeping Sikhs as Slaves is OK.

3. In Obama’s Bahrain, Sikhism is illegal: The Slaves of Bahrain, including the Sikhs, are not allowed to practice their own religion. Under Bahraini Shari’a law, Islam is the only Legal religion. Even the most immoral and repugnant Slave owner recognizes that he is responsible for the well-being of his Slaves. If President Obama is to continue holding those Slaves, he is morally required to provide protection for their Freedom of Religion. So please, President Obama, I am begging you, if you’re absolutely refusing to free the Slaves, then at least, grant them Freedom of Religion!

4. Sikh religious Sacrament draws the Death Penalty in Obama’s Bahrain: Tolerated in India for millennia, Marijuana is a traditional sacrament at Sikh festivals, and among the Sikh Nihang and Bhangi sects; and the Tenth Sikh Guru, one of Sikhism’s founders, Guru Gobind Singh wrote it about as “Bhang” in his poetry, and gave it to followers. In the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report, the Sikhs’ practices concerning Ganja are reported under the regional heading “Punnjab.” http://www.ukcia.org/research/indian/chapt9.php

6. Obama Classifies the Pakistanis it kills as “Millitants”if the have Facial Hair, even if the Murdered Pakistani isa Child, according to Medea Benjamin’s documentary Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

7. Obama’s Goons frequently Commit Hate Crimes Against Medical Marijuana patients, many of whom have Long Hair or Facial Hair: These Hate Crimes ordered by the President (raids on Medical Marijuana facilities) have resulted in excruciating suffering and premature deaths for patients with ALS, AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, Skin Cancer, and many other maladies. Longtime activist Medical Rights activist Steven DeAngelo, now a Political Prisoner with long hair and facial hair like a Sikh. http://stuffstonerslike.com/2012/07/14/protest-president-obamas-fundraiser-in-oakland-ca-on-july-23/

8. The President has publicly announced that he is allowed to order Murders/Assassinations: The Murders he orders are frequently against people with beards. The high-profile Murders that Obama orders are against non-Christians.

9. Obama ordered the Administration’s investigation of US Right-wing Terrorism closed down because Rush Limbaugh and other Right-wing TV personalities demanded it. In ordering the investigation of Right-wing Terrorism stopped, he also committed a Hate Crime: He further that all Terrorism investigation be against Muslims, according to Democracy Now! This was a Hate Crime against non-Christians who might have hair.

10. The Obama Administration has cracked down on non-mainstream-Christian religious practices: Its FDA carried out a Hate Crime in Lawrence, Kansas, at a shop dealing in religious sacraments named “Sacred Journey.” Anyone can tell by the name of the place that its intentions are religious, and thus protected by the First Amendment. The owner was charged with crimes though he was growing perfectly Legal plants, and supplying Legal sacraments. Even if President Obama has an intense personal hatred on non-mainstream-Christians, he should not be empowered to put that hatred into policy against the minority religions.

11. These Massacres of US citizens happen specifically during time of war. Obama is pushing for lots more war.

12. When the Colorado Massacre happened a Few Days Earlier, Obama’s spokeperson immediately announced that more such incidents would certainly be tolerated: According to Democracy Now!, Press Secretary Jay Carney the President would say nothing and do nothing that would curb gun violence by restricting Right-wing lone nuts from massacring Americans. Carney said they weren’t gonna touch it. Terrible choice. The President’s job is to protect the American people, no matter how much money the Gun Lobby has.

“Liberals” Attacking Romney from the Right — by NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and even some writers here at FireDogLake.com [both of which are usually considered to be hosting views from the political Left] used Right-wing propaganda from the Obama campaign, continuing to recycle the meme “gaffe.” Yes, even Amy Goodman reported that Mitt Romney’s statement of concern over a labor strike in Great Britain is a “gaffe,” a term today used widely within the Obama campaign (and apparently in the shadow campaign as well). Here’s the story from two unofficial components of the Obama campaign: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/26/mitt-romney-olympics-gaffe-harry-reid_n_1707996.html

My question is: Why didn’t President Obama voice any support for the abused workers, as Romney did? Why was Amy Goodman into attacking Mitt Romney for his bringing the plight of these abused workers before the world? Why was Democracy Now! not concerned with the plight of the abused workers? Why did she use this as an opportunity to campaign for Obama? Will she continue to be awarded for such work? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/sports/olympics/british-customs-workers-call-off-strike.html

Obama’s propagandists, and many people who would have us believe that they are “democrats” (or Liberals or Progressives or on the Left), apparently think that Mitt Romney should not have offended his hosts by mentioning problems. But with the security there announced as failing and falling apart just as a US Presidential candidate was heading there to take part in the Olympics [the Equestrian Dressage event], he would have been remiss not to mention the worrisome situation. These are not gaffes. I worked against Romney when he ran for Governor and I’m working against him now. These are not gaffes.

Look at this disgusting piece of Right-wing pro-Obama propaganda, from the BBC/British Government. And once they finally let you, pay attention to what Mitt Romney actually says.

What I found even more bizarre the other day was to hear President Obama attacking Romney from the Right, using almost identical words to what Republicans usually say when attacking Democrats: Obama claimed that the tax plan Romney [that tax-and-spend Liberal(?)] was touting would send jobs overseas, making us anti-competitive. He said that Romney is too Progressive on taxation. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303612804577531393388570440.html

It was ironic and duplicitous for Obama to say that Romney’s plan will create 800,000 jobs overseas, after he himself has just completed Free Trade Agreements to send US jobs to Korea, Colombia, and Panama, where workers have few rights. Note that Florida’s neo-Fascist Governor Rick Scott praised Obama for this Right-wing Atrocity. http://www.flchamber.com/print/3737

Meanwhile Bill Maher and the HBO show Big Love have spent millions of dollars in television time convincing Americans that Mormons are disgusting and not worth trusting. Mitt Romney is a Mormon. I was kind of surprised when I learned that Romney was a Mormon. I heard it from a fellow Liberal several years ago, when Romney was first running for Massachusetts Governor. My friend cautioned me that Romney could get elected in Massachusetts, and then, use that to catapult him toward the Presidency. And he was a Mormon. http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/19122451/poll-few-think-romneys-faith-resembles-their-own

I’m only going to say this once. It’s not appropriate to discriminate against someone based on religion. (To do so is a tactic of the far-far-far-Right.)

The Left-to-Right line-up in the Presidential race is getting really crazy now. Not only are Obama and his supporters assailing Romney for being too far Left, the nation’s top Nazi philosopher former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Don Black told Cenk Uygur that both Obama and the Republicans are too far-Right for him. He said he supports Ron Paul. Congressman Paul stands significantly to the Left of both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Marijuana and peace. Then there’s (former?) Presidential candidate Rocky Anderson, who just named a running mate last week, before appearing on the weekend fake news program Up With Chris Hayes, a show hosted twice each weekend by Hayes from The Nation magazine, whose apparent job is to trick Liberals/Progressives/Left voters into voting for the extreme Right: Barack Obama. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkJb1m0o_m4

The Hayes show is actually a long commercial for Obama’s reelection. Rocky Anderson didn’t even mention that he was running for President, he just attacked Mitt Romney for not being more Obama-friendly. Hayes [posing himself as a non-biased Journalist] identified Anderson as a Democrat, and brought him back on at the end of the segment, to defend Mitt Romney against the worst charges that others had made on the show. Anderson didn’t say he was running, but was clearly positioning himself between Obama and Romney. Pundits have long told us that a plurality of voters are Independents, and that the preponderance of them are actually between the Democrats and the Republicans, Left-to-Right speaking. I dispute that. I think most voters are actually to the Left of Republicrats like Obromney on most issues. When Rocky first started running, his website said that he didn’t run as a Green because he didn’t want to be associated with the Left. They took that down, and he ran Left, for a while.

So here’s our revised Left-to-Right Presidential candidates line-up (I’ll insert the Nazi philosopher where he says he fits. Remember, while they are apparently to the Left of Republicrats, Nazis are still way too far Right to be trusted with the Presidency.)

Other Religions are Dumb, Wrong, Bad, and Strange: YouTube Inspires Reinstatement of Spanish Inquisition — by NormanB ("Deviations from the Norm")

Unfortunately, I’m not kidding in the title: A legislator saw YouTube videos of people allegedly in distress, allegedly while on Salvia Divinorum, and based on those videos, he introduced a bill to ban the herb. A religious Sacrament, Salvia was banned by the Inquisition in 1508, along with Marijuana, Colorines, and 200 other plant Sacraments then used in Mexico.

An fdl Seminal Diary yesterday about the Alaska Republican Primary Election titled In Alaska, Lisa Murkowski Concedes to Teabagger – End of the 30-Year Murkowski Family Reign reported on the state of the Election. The gist of that posting was that the Primary’s winner, Tea Party conservative Joe Williams, may be easier for Democrat Scott McAdams to defeat in November than notorious Republican Oil Puppet Murkowski. Near the end of the Diary, however, the writer made a cruel bigoted slur against one of the candidates. You can go there if you want, but I’ll repeat my response below, so you won’t need to click away again:

Good riddance to the murky Murkowski Oil Dynasty.
I vehemently oppose the Right-wing politics of Joe Williams.

That said, I also vehemently oppose the poster’s apparent hateful Right-wing bigotry evidenced in the post, about “this teabagger who looks and thinks a lot more like the unibomber …”

Nominally liberal Rachel Maddow also suffers from this affliction, since nearly every time she shows a photo of a man with a beard she exhibits contempt or hatred and mentions his facial hair.

But doesn’t Scott McAdams also sport a partial beard? Is he a “unibomber” too? Maybe they’re both Arabs or Muslims or Sikhs or Coptics or Amish or Jews or Hippies or Eastern Orthodox.

Millions of people follow Pope Shenouda in Egypt or Pope Benedict in the Vatican, based on the idea that each holds a tradition passed down from one of Jesus’s Disciples. Are Coptics and/or Catholics wrong? And, if so, should they be stopped? And what about tiny minority religions?

In the 19th Century, the US declared the Mormon War, but was unsuccessful in banning the religion. In the 20th Century, the US tried to obliterate the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Orthodox Church in Florida. The most visible members were imprisoned. Yet still, the "Florida Coptics" exist.

Rationalism

Rather than anthropomorphizing a Diety, many people today consider Nature, Scientific Truth, and the Universe to be the same as G-d.

In the late 19th Century, the Rationalist School of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church adopted such thought. Here’s how it was passed down to me:
1. Be good.
2. Studying primary Biblical themes enriches one with knowledge and understanding of our roots, history, culture, morals, humanity, human nature, et cetera. However, …
3. … there is no G-d, no devil, no Heaven, no Hell, no afterlife.
4. Humans evolved from earlier primates.
5. Jesus was a good man and a great teacher.
6. We ain’t Catholic.
7. Shut up and eat your peas.

Syncretism

The Sikhs began with the premise that the religions of both the Muslims and the Hindus surrounding them are equally good and correct, and that both deserve of respect. Later Sikh Gurus asserted that the religions of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, New Agers, and others deserve the same respect. The Baha’i Faith takes a similar tack. Strangely, Sikhs believe they shouldn’t cut their hair, while Baha’is believe that they should.

Political Religions

The Florida Coptics, the Rainbow Family, adherents of Rastafari, and the Church of the Tree of Life can be classified this way. Some people say "Politics should play no role in religions." Others say "Who are you to tell me what belongs in my religion?" Still others say "No one should be able to dictate another’s religion." Yet others say "All religions are ridiculous and wrong."

Quakers (Friends) and Unitarians may be considered Political Religions. Both started as Christian sects, but are liberal enough to now welcome and include some who don’t consider themselves Christian. Of course, when one starts with such a liberal ideology as Quakerism, he may come to consider himself not a member of any organized religion, as Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln did. When asked to officially declare his religion after becoming President, Lincoln wrote "Liberal."

An important Political Religion is the Universal Life Church. A formerly conservative Protestant Minister, Kirby Hensley, started it in California in 1959. From the backwoods and uneducated, Kirby had a revelation that no one should be doubted in their own religion, and therefore he began ordaining everyone who wanted to be a Minister. More than a million have taken him up on it. All four of the Beatles did. Many Americans got religious waivers keeping them out of the Vietnam War because of their affiliation with the ULC. The First Church of Bob was a congregation of the ULC.

That last title makes fun of the Bab, founder of the Baha’i Faith. In fact, its larger manifestation, the Church of the Subgenius, makes fun of every religion and spiritual concept its members know about. Pagans and Atheists also have ULC congregations.

When President Ulysses S. Grant endorsed grammar school education for all Americans of school age, Catholic schools were already proliferating in this country. Some reactionary Protestants pushed Pres. Grant to ensure that his program would teach Protestantism to America’s pupils. Grant was the leader of the Radical Republicans (not anything like today’s group called that). When the Liberal Republicans and The Nation magazine had advocated not letting newly freed slaves vote until they could read, Grant had pushed back insisting that Blacks in the South would be allowed to vote. That was called "Reconstruction." Throughout the South, Blacks were elected to political office. That ended when Grant left office. As for religious schooling, he stated that the United States must never promote the beliefs of, nor discriminate against "Sectarians, Pagans, or Atheists." Grant had a beard.

In the interest of complete openness: In 1980, I joined the ULC, the Church of the Tree of Life, and the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Orthodox Church. I now work for the First Universal Tree Of Life Church, which has been since last millennium been a congregation of the ULC.

Those of Us Who Study History are Condemned to Watch the Rest of the World Repeat It — By Norman B

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
– George Santayana

“Those of us who study history are condemned to watch the rest of the world repeat it.” — Me.

Here I am in the liberal bastion of Amherst, Massachusetts. Yet Islamophobia and related hatred of people who are different is in full bloom. I am not Muslim or Arab, but you can’t tell that from looking at me, because I have a long gray beard that can strike fear into the 10,000 or more Freshmen in this University town, who’ve never before lived in such a multi-cultural Mecca (if I can still use that term). Lots of times during my daily walk across the UMass campus, a new Freshman has seen me, and turned to run away in terror. It will probably happen again next week. I can laugh at it, but it hurts immensely.

Earlier this year, a mosque was proposed, but the haters – I mean "the neighbors" – prevented it, falsely claiming that the traffic would be a problem.

And even at the most liberal place in town, Hampshire College, I am severely discriminated against. To put into perspective just how liberal Hampshire College is: For several years Saturday Night Live aired a continuing skit with a running gag about Hampshire students: No grades, no tests, no departments, students openly smoking pot. It’s all true; and it’s alright with me.

As it happens, I am a Minister in a radical church, the Church of the Tree of Life. Hateful opportunist politicians have attempted (unconstitutionally, I think) to ban the Church by illegalizing its Sacraments, the most famous of which today is Salvia Divinorum, an herb that doesn’t hurt anyone, but makes most of its users uncomfortable and scared, because it takes them to the place of prophecy. The Church began in San Francisco around 1970, and has operated without problems here in Amherst more than 15 years. Three-quarters of the attendees at our events have been Hampshire College students.

So when a local newspaper ran a disinformation article about Salvia, I was compelled to act, including placing fliers at Hampshire College, as I’ve done for more than a decade. Ah, but I don’t look like a college student, even a Hampshire student, and I don’t dress like a professor. So, as I was boarding the bus to leave, a Hampshire College policewoman approached me with her hand on her gun, trembling profusely. I felt like I was facing that poor McCain rally attendee who, speaking of Candidate Obama, stammered “He’s – he’s a – a Arab!” John McCain, of course, said “No he’s not; he’s a good man,” as if the two are mutually exclusive.

Well, I was banned from Hampshire College, despite my history there. (I had worked there, I had performed there, had been involved in political organizing there, and my activist/performer career had been the subject of a student’s dissertation, among other connections.) And if you think that’s bad, you should see what happens if I try to get onto a plane.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
– George Santayana

“Those of us who study history are condemned to watch the rest of the world repeat it.” — Me.

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